


I don't wanna admit that you're gone

by redlipsredledger



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Broken Bucky Barnes, Broken Hearts, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky and Natasha's past, Bucky is unsure how to say goodbye, Comics/Movie Crossover, F/M, Give Natasha her comic history back, His heart is shattered, James Barnes was a man once, Natasha Romanov's Death, Oneshot, POV Bucky Barnes, Regret, The Author Regrets Everything, buckynat - Freeform, soviet soulmates, winterwidow - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:35:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22268023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redlipsredledger/pseuds/redlipsredledger
Summary: I'm the Oneshot queen. No but really I love to write this heartbreaking stuff and I don't know why, I always cry lmao!ANYWAY!Have a oneshot from Bucky's perspective as he deals with the immediate aftermath of Natasha's death on Vormir and he laments on the fact that he should've told her while he had the chance that he did remember her or at least enough of her to know he loved her.(I used comic quotes so shoot me, their comic history applies here anyway also autocorrect is a dbag and changed the planet name I am so sorry this is why I need to not write things on my tablet lmao)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	I don't wanna admit that you're gone

**Author's Note:**

> Song inspired me and I'm sorry for that because this song makes me cry. Song: I don't wanna write this song by Brett Young.
> 
> What went wrong? Maybe the hardest part is we didn't break this heart, nobody cheated or lied; I still have to live with Goodbye but how can I just move on, I've loved you for way too long.
> 
> I don't wanna admit that you're gone, I don't wanna write this song.

He'd seen the pain in Clint Barton's eyes when he'd stood there at Tony's funeral and he'd tried to keep himself composed. Everyone was filled with sadness, everyone around them breaking in their own ways but inside he was crumbling apart like a fucking earthquake and nothing made sense anymore.

When he'd dusted, he could feel her eyes on him and he wished that he could turn and just say a goodbye. Just one word. Just one would have been better than the nothing he was left with now. Bucky Barnes couldn't talk to a single soul about the pain that he was feeling inside and he knew it. He was trying to hold on, standing stoic with an unreadable expression despite those around him trying to read it.

In his pockets, his hands were balled so tightly into fists that they were digging into the palms of his hands just so that he could feel something besides the urge to drop to his knees and scream. He wanted so badly to just run, turn and leave and find a place where he could be alone and process what he was feeling but he knew that there was no way to process something like this not when he was still learning how to be a person all over again.

_You could at least recognise me._

That was the problem: He did. He'd seen those eyes before, he'd felt her warm skin beneath his hands in an entirely different way and the recollection had him stagger slightly; he felt like he couldn't breathe, they were stood outside and yet he couldn't breathe, it felt like gravity itself was crushing him under the weight of it and at this point he'd gladly let it. Steve's eyes moved to him and he looked confused, confused despite the grief clear on his face and he placed his hand on Bucky's shoulder.

Bucky shrugged it off and turned to walk away. He reached a point far enough away from everyone else, he was glad for the seclusion of Tony Stark's new home and Tony was yet another regret Bucky would have to live with, he'd never made amends for what he'd done to Howard and Maria and now he never would. Bucky would have to live with knowing that not only had he killed his friend but that he'd never get the chance to make it right with his son.

They'd lost so much, they'd won the battle and everyone around them swore that despite the costs they'd won the war but they were fools. They'd lost the war because the casualties didn't make it worth it, not to him. He'd rather stay gone than have her gone.

He could see it in his head whether he wanted to or not, her laid there all alone never being able to be brought home and it hated it. He dropped to his knees, tears brimmed his dark lashes and he dragged his hands threw his hair and he dropped forward; his hands hit the ground and a loud, agonised scream broke Bucky's lips. He punched the ground over and over again until there was nothing there but a mudded mess and he found himself trying to breathe.

Just breathe.

Why didn't he want to breathe anymore? Images flashed through his mind and every one of them killed him just a little bit more. He remembered holding her close to him during nights and stolen moments they'd been able to just be, he remembered telling her he loved her and it was the first time that he'd ever said that to absolutely anyone bar his family. It was the first time he'd ever told someone he'd been with that he loved them...

It was the first time that James Barnes had fallen in love and it was the last, too.

He remembered feeling something for the first time in as long as he could remember when she'd been stood before him and placed her hand on his cheek, she'd told him that she wasn't afraid of him and that she saw the man that was locked inside of him and how she wished that they could run away, the Winter Soldier fought for control but James Barnes quelled the monster and he did so by holding to her and imagining that idealistic life they could try to find if they could only run.

He wished now that they'd ran away when she'd asked, maybe things would have been different. The soul stone demanded a sacrifice of that which you love the most and he found himself wondering what it was that she loved enough to die for.

Her friends most likely, what right did he have to expect Natalia to hold onto what they were after all these years? Her words rang in his head and he'd spent the whole time he and Steve had run after that trying to figure out if what he was remembering was real or another implant but if she knew it too then maybe, just maybe it was real.

Maybe him loving her had been the realest thing he'd had in that hell.

She quieted the ghosts. She reminded him what it was like to be human and he remembered her screaming that day when they'd found out about them. He remembered her fighting like hell to break free of the grip of the two guards that held her as he was pulled back into the lab, he knew what was coming as well as she did; they wiped his memory and they put him back into cryo and she was... He supposed she was forced to marry her intended.

He hadn't talked to her about after, he wished he had because she'd seemed so badly like she wanted to but there just hadn't been time; he had been a liability but he remembered a pain in her eyes that he hadn't thought all that much of at first. Natasha felt what they'd done to him and she seemed to blame herself even if she'd never voiced it. He could still read her even if he wasn't sure at the time what he was reading.

He felt a crushing pain in his chest, a shaking that rocked his whole body as tears streamed down his face and in that moment there was no bravado, there was nothing of the Soldier turned Assassin that had killed dozens of people over the years, there was just remnants of a broken man who'd never get the chance to tell the woman he loved that he remembered her.

There was just remnants of a broken man that would never get the chance to say goodbye.

He dragged in ragged, unsteady breaths and he pulled himself reluctantly to his feet and he dusted himself off trying his best to shake off the mud on his hands and he took a moment then to himself to fight for the composed face that he'd been putting on all day. That was the bravado, that was the face that he'd show to the others so that they didn't see it. He'd show them what they expected to see so that they didn't see that he was broken inside.

Nothing of what he had held to was there anymore. He still had her gun, he'd intended to give it back to her but he had never gotten the chance. The sun was starting to set and another day had started to come to a close and he was glad for it for the first time in a long time. He was glad for it because eventually, he'd be able to be alone.

But Natasha wasn't to be the only loss that James Barnes had to endure that day. Steve Rogers had chosen to remain with Peggy, of course he had; a part of him was glad that at least one of them would get to be with the person that they loved and he fought hard against the urge to ask him to take him back just so that he could find her back then and tell her that he was sorry and give him that one last chance to run with her the way he wished he had.

They didn't know though, he knew that none of them knew what Natasha really was and he wouldn't tarnish that now by letting the truth come out. There was no sense in it now anyway. Steve passed the shield onto Sam Wilson and it was fitting, Bucky was no hero and he never would be. He'd done the right thing and that was yet another pain that he had to settle with somehow.

At the first chance though he'd left and he hadn't said a word to anyone because he didn't know what the hell to say to any of them. How could he begin to explain what he was feeling? None of these people truly cared for him anyway, Sharon and Sam... They were the closest thing he had to friends now but he wouldn't show them his agony, Bucky Barnes would find a way to process that all on his own and he did, he took the first flight he could find to Russia and he made his way back to the last place he remembered being with her.

It took him days, it had been a mountain range and he'd been training her and he remembered her laid there in the snow, her red hair a contrast to the white landscape and the end of her nose turned a delicate pink as the cold bit at her pale skin and he remembered shrugging out of his jacket and passing it to her despite the fact that she had her own, she'd tried to refuse at first but he'd been insistent on it and held it out to her anyway and she'd yielded in the end and took it. He didn't care if he got cold as long as she was okay.

She'd reached out and took his hand, pulling him toward her but she'd underestimated the slippery ground beneath her because she fell onto her back and he hovered over her with an amused smile as he shook his head at her, one hand moved a tendril of red hair out of her eyes and he shook his head.

_"Now isn't the time." He didn't sound convincing as he spoke._

_She knew it too. She chuckled and leaned up to place a kiss against his lips._

_"Now is the perfect time." She replied quietly._

The memory was agonising. The cold air filled his lungs and it burned like acid but he didn't care. He didn't care because all he could see was her and he fought so hard not to reach out to a ghost, to a mere whisper of a woman that he'd spend the rest of whatever life he had missing and Bucky Barnes stared out into the empty landscape around him and allowed tears to spill down his cheeks unashamedly. 

He'd cry for her because he knew once he'd settled with her death he'd become empty all over again.

_A long time ago, Natalia Romanova made me remember what it was to feel human and they punished us both for that, in different ways, i’m sorry natalia… I never wanted to get you into trouble. but I guess that’s all I'm good at._

He had been so lost back then, so lost and just a monster that was armed and pointed at a target like he'd never been anything but a toy, a marionette on a string and nothing more but he was, he was so much more than that and she'd reminded him of that. She'd tried so hard to tell him that they should've run away when they had the chance and she was right.

She was right. 

"I wish I'd run with you that night." He whispered gently.

_“I never even realized how lost I was without her but I always was. just some lost soldier who forgot he ever had a home… Until she gave me one.”_

He fell to his knees.

"You should've come home to me, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, I should've told you I remembered you. I love you. I love you..." He let the words die in the cold breeze and he allowed himself then to break completely.

_“I try to imagine my life without her, and all I see is pain. and heartbreak. but at least I’ll be the only one feeling it. I take solace in that thought and hold on to it for as long as I can but it won’t be long enough.”_

He'd miss her for the rest of his life and all he'd feel now was the pain and the loss and he knew it.

"Goodbye, Natalia."

Goodbye.


End file.
